Abstract 

This study was designed to determine comparative effect of computer tutorial and simulation techniques on achievement, interest and retention of automechanics students in technical colleges in Lagos state. The study was a pretest, posttest, non-equivalent control group quasiexperiment which involved groups of students in their intact classes assigned to treatment groups. Six research questions and nine hypotheses, tested at 0.05 level of significance, guided the study. The population for the study consisted of 148 students offering automechanics in technical colleges in Lagos State. The sample size was 136 students. There are five technical colleges in Lagos State offering automechanics. Purposive sampling technique was used to select four of the technical colleges that have both male and female students in their enrolments. Intact classes of the four Technical Colleges selected, were randomly assigned to the treatment conditions. 71 students constituted treatment group assigned to computer simulation technique, and 65 students constituted another treatment group assigned to computer tutorial technique. The instruments used for data collection were Automechanics Achievement Test (AAT), and Auto-mechanics Interest Inventory (AII). To ensure content validity of the AAT, a Table of Specification was built for the test., the two instruments were subjected to face validation by five experts. The AAT was trial tested for the purpose of determining the psychometric indices of the test. A total of 100 items of the AAT had good difficulty, discrimination and distractor indices. The trial test for determining the coefficient of stability of the AAT was carried out using test re-test reliability technique. Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient of the AAT was found to be 0.80. In addition, Kuder Richarson (K-R) 20 was used to test the internal consistency of the AAT. The reliability coefficient obtained was 0.71. Cronbach Alpha was used to determine the internal consistency of the AII items. The reliability coefficient computed was found to be 0.91. The data collected were analyzed using mean, to answer the research questions while ANCOVA was used to test the nine hypotheses formulated to guide this study. The study found out that Students taught auto-mechanics with computer simulation had a higher mean achievement, interest and retention scores, than those taught with computer tutorial in the automechanics achievement test. There was a significant effect of gender on students’ achievement, interest and retention in automechanics favouring male. The study found out no significant interaction effect of treatments given to students taught with computer simulation and tutorial techniques and their gender with respect to their mean scores on achievement, interest and test for retention of learning. Hence, irrespective of nature of gender, learners’ retention, interest and achievement in automechanics will be improved when simulation technique is employed for teaching automechanics. Consequently, it was recommended that technical teachers of automechanics should adopt the use of computer simulation technique to the teaching of automechanics; Technical teachers of automechanics should prepare their lessons in such a way that students are allowed ample opportunity to interact freely with virtual objects and animation in computer simulation so as to improve their achievement.